How Users Donate on the Internet – A Payment Report from Russia

Russia’s leading payment service Yandex.Money conducted research on which payment methods users prefer for making donations to private or non-profit projects. This year, users donated money using bank cards (53%), e-wallets (34%), online banking (9%), and text messages (3%). Other transfers were sent online via payment kiosks, and mPOS.

Interestingly, 20% of donations are recurrent. That is, users enable an option to send donations automatically every month from their bank card.

The prime time for fundraising on the Internet is Mondays and Thursdays for non-profit projects and Fridays and Sundays for private ones. The research showed that, on these days, those who seek funding receive the largest volume of donations. In addition, users usually donate to non-profits during lunch time, and to private projects in the evenings.

Statistics were provided by Yandex.Money using anonymous data from Yandex Payment Solution, which charitable organizations use to accept donations, and the service Yasobe.ru, which allows every user to start a webpage for a private crowdfunding project. Other Yandex.Money services also contributed data.

Yandex Payment Solution for charities was launched last year. The service enables charity organizations to accept donations via e-wallets, bank cards, SMS, payment kiosks, and mPOS. Currently, Yandex Payment Solution hosts more than 500 charitable organizations.

Yasobe.ru is a crowdfunding service for private projects. Users can launch a webpage via Yasobe.ru and customize buttons for making donations via e-wallets or bank card. In total, users have launched 160,000 fundraising pages on Yasobe.ru and other Yandex.Money services in the last nine months.